JSTOR Plant Science Offers a Rich Bounty of Plant Information

JSTOR Plant Science, a database providing access to information about plants from around the world, is now available through the Cheng Library. The database contains foundational content vital to plant science - plant type specimens, taxonomic structures, scientific literature, and related materials such as letters, maps, paintings, and drawings. The interface supports searching basic and advanced searching and browsing by plant name (along with family, genus and species names), geography (places collected and distributed), herbarium, and resource type. Currently, the resources in JSTOR Plant Science include:

• over 210 images of artefacts
• over 270 books
• over 1,260 drawings
• over 15,100 letters and other correspondence
• over 70 manuscripts
• over 4,300 paintings
• over 13,300 photographs
• over 780 prints
• over 812,000 plant specimen records with images

...and more. The site also contains a news feed, with updates contributed through a dedicated blog, Twitter accounts, and Flickr accounts. By 2013, the database is expected to grow to over 2.2 million plant specimen records. JSTOR Plant Science provides an interface that supports teaching, including the ability to measure and record plant specimens, share observations and objects with colleagues and classmates, and investigate global plant biodiversity. JSTOR Plant Science is a useful teaching tool for life science, environmental science, and botanical science programs. Students and faculty can create individual "My PLANTS" accounts within JSTOR Plant Science to tag, annotate and save objects, save customized searches, and share tags with other users. Online tutorials (in video format) are available for the following:

• Overview: This video is designed to show how you to navigate the JSTOR Plant Science website.
• Functionality: This video is designed to show you how to use the powerful functions on JSTOR Plant Science.
• Content: This video is designed to show you some of the rich content available for discovery and use on JSTOR Plant Science.

Something About the Author is Now Online

Something About the Author is a biographical reference series providing illustrated biographical profiles of children's authors and artists. Published in print since 1971, the series currently comprises over 210 volumes covering over 12,000 individuals, ranging from established award winners to authors and illustrators who are just beginning their careers. Entries typically cover: personal life, career, writings, works in progress, adaptations, and additional sources. Starting with Volume 200 (2009), the Cheng Library has moved from a print to an online subscription to the series. Our online access currently covers more than 750 individuals and provides scanned image reproductions of the pages from the print version of each volume. A new volume is added to the database approximately once every five weeks, with an average of 75 authors per volume, so the database will grow over time. The Cheng Library will continue to make the print copies of Volumes 1 through 199 available in the Curriculum Materials Center.